LONDON (AFP) ? Delays of half an hour faced British people who tried to buy tickets online for the London 2012 Olympics when the second round of sales opened at 6am on Friday.
Applications were open to the 1.2 million applicants who failed to get any tickets in the first round.
Many who tried on Friday morning were eventually able to complete ticket requests, but still won't know for up to 48 hours whether they have been successful at the second attempt.
Some would-be ticket buyers logging on at 6am were directed to a webpage saying: "We are experiencing high demand. You will be automatically directed to the page requested as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience."
Sometimes, after several goes, they got to the stage of selecting events and providing bank card details, only to be told: "Sorry we cannot process your request please try again later."
Eventually the lucky ones saw a message saying their application was being processed, followed after yet another wait by confirmation it had gone through, then an e-mail to their personal addres.
A London 2012 spokeswoman said: "The system is working, it has not crashed. Due to high demand some people are being held outside the system.
"For those in the system it is working and transactions are going through, but we are having to hold some people back from going through the site due to high demand."
Londoner Nick Morrison said: "I logged into my 2012 account at 5:50am, ten minutes before the scheduled opening of the sales window."
"When I selected an athletics session with tickets apparently available and tried to apply, a 'Sorry, we cannot process your request - please try again later' message appeared on my screen.
"After around ten attempts and 15 minutes, I got through to the payment processing page and submitted my payment but the same 'cannot process' message appeared again after a three or four-minute delay with a 'Processing' icon on the page.
"At the sixth attempt at this, I finally got past this at 6:26am and was told my application had successfully been submitted."
Another applicant had a similar experience: "I was quite excited when I got in right on 6am and was able to select hockey and archery sessions but confirming the application was very frustrating. It took me about 12 goes."
Some 2.3 million tickets went on sale on Friday after three million were sold in the first round from March 15 to April 26.
Of the 1.9 million people who applied the first time, just 700,000 were successful.
The disappointed 1.2 million applicants have a 10-day window in the second round, until 5pm on July 3, but the process this time is first come first served.
Nearly three quarters of the second rounds tickets are for the men's and women's football tournaments, which are being held in major stadiums across Britain.
ticketsBesides the football, plenty of remain for boxing, judo, hockey, handball and volleyball.
Availability is low for events including athletics, rowing, table tennis and the basketball finals.
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